The Little Things
by ScarletDeva
Summary: Buffy and Angel have their ways of measuring all kinds of things. Set of shortfics.
1. Cataloguing First Kisses

_**Cataloguing First Kisses**_  
Fandom: Buffy/Angel  
Rating: G  
Summary: Buffy was always serious about first kisses. She remembered them, wrote them down in her diary and analyzed them. They were her favorite turning points. But after everything, she never thought she'd have another one worth listing in her little catalogue. She was... just maybe... wrong.  
Author's Note: This is a prequel fic to Counting Dawn and Marking Notches. I kind of have to blame **jedisam** for this one.

* * *

Buffy remembered all her important first kisses. The very first one was with a boy named Jess at her thirteenth birthday party. They were playing Truth or Dare and later she realized how badly they managed to fulfill the dare. But at the time, the tentative-sloppy meeting of lips was like finding Eden, naked and new and full of wonder. They even dated for a week after that. 

Then there was Tyler and their first kiss. She knew a little better by then and she could tell his technique was damn near perfect, smooth and practiced. It was a satisfying kiss that promised something more. That something more was never delivered though Buffy was soon too far into her new responsibilities to really regret it as anything more than the loss of her innocence.

Her first kiss with Pike was different. It was like walking on the dark side, a mark of change, the beginning of her new life. It was a little euphoric and a little dangerous. It was also a little steady, so necessary when she felt so lost. She knew it was transitory even then, just coming down from an adrenaline high, but it was sweetness in the midst of the bitterness of her duty.

And then there was Angel.

Angel...

Their first kiss made her forget all her other first kisses for as long as it lasted. It was velvety and deep and she could only liken it to smooth dark chocolate sliding across her taste buds. And fire. Fire just beginning to kindle.

The first kiss after he came back from hell held the whole inferno. It was banked down and caged. It hurt and it sucked her right back into everything she felt for him. It hurt so much but she simply couldn't not kiss him.

Their first kiss after she came back from the dead hurt more though. She didn't think it could but it did. She went to see him. She owed him that much. And for a moment the world took on color. She could taste life in the feel of his cold tongue. She could taste the flames she thought she left in her grave. And she thought if her soul was improperly fastened with a happiness curse, it would have flown and she would have been glad for it. His didn't fly though. Maybe that's what hurt so much. Still, it was so beautiful while it lasted. Beautiful and complicated and alive.

That was what she was trying to recapture when she and Spike first kissed. But that was just shades of black, desperate, seeking, but so very lost. She felt alive, yes, but it only reached her first layers, leaving her locked out and alone inside. It marked a new ending in her life, and a new beginning. A beginning she didn't want.

She grew up since then she thought. She kissed other... men, mere mortal or otherwise. But she didn't note those kisses. She didn't classify them. She didn't dissect them. Some days she thought she'd never have another kiss worth adding to her list. Willow would reassure her over the phone from whatever exotic location her road trip took her. But late at night Buffy was sure Willow was wrong.

She was sorry for doubting her at the moment.

At this exact, sunlit moment when a tingle began in the pit of her stomach, that tell-tale Slayer warning sense that this time rang a subtler tone, a tone she knew too well but couldn't now believe.

Across the way in Sunnydale park she saw a man. A tall man with dark, careless hair and bright, brown eyes. Noon-light accented his pale features in a way that was almost familiar but Buffy couldn't dwell on that because he crossed the space between them faster than she could begin to process and she was getting another first kiss.

One for the catalogue.

It spun her, her breath catching somewhere between her throat and her solar plexus, her toes straining as she clung to him, and her mouth... Well this was true Eden. She knew Angel in that kiss, knew the feel of his skin, the new heat of his body, the coffee tinged taste of his mouth. She knew the pumping of his blood, feeling the rapid thumps under her hand, placed right on his heart. She knew his heart.

She felt alive.


	2. Counting Dawn

_**Counting Dawn**_  
Fandom: Buffy/Angel  
Rating: G  
Summary: Buffy fell in love with numbers. And Angel... well Angel was too busy watching something else.  
Author's Note: I was inspired by **biggrstaffbunch**. This is fairly rough so I may revise it at some point. It's just a drabble really. Marking Notches is the mirror piece to this.

* * *

Buffy didn't remember when it happened but she fell in love with numbers. Fantastical ones, like the two billion third dead by Angel's hand demon which became his redemption. Real ones, like the twenty third morning that Angel woke her right before dawn with excitement glinting in his brown eyes and carried her outside to the porch swing to watch the sun burn up the sky into four shades of red and three shades of orange.

Yes, she loved numbers. She drew her robe closer as she curled up against Angel, her eyelids languidly sliding down to shield her from the early brightness of the new-minted morning. His arm, slung casually around her shoulders, tugged her closer as he twitched a little, still expecting to burst into flames.

Her favorite numbers started with two, she noticed. Like her twenty-ninth birthday present in the form of an offer to live in sin from her newly human soulmate. And the little 201 Ridge Street house that Buffy privately thought Angel settled on because of its huge windows and massive porch swing.

Angel kissed the top of her head casually. Twice, she noted. Oh really more than twice, but she liked symmetry in her counting. She grinned, letting her hair fall forward to cover the overjoyed expression.

_I love you._

They didn't talk much. The chatterbox Buffy felt no need to chatter around Angel and he was much too awed at watching shadows fall across the asphalt to waste time with words. She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder and watched him watching the dawn break.

_I love you two...too..._

She was almost getting to like dawn too. Almost.


	3. Marking Notches

_**Marking Notches**_  
Fandom: Buffy/Angel  
Rating: G  
Summary: Angel doesn't know that Buffy counts numbers. But he has his own way of keeping track.  
Author's Note: This is a companion piece to Counting Dawn. I think this one needs a little work so if anyone actually reads this, I'd appreciate a constructive criticism.

* * *

Dawn was coming. Angel could feel it in his bones, a holdover from before his redemption, from his vampire days. He hid his smile in Buffy's golden hair, a reflex of secrecy that was another anachronism.

He slid out of bed quietly, knowing it wouldn't wake his beloved Slayer. She was notoriously an anti-morning militant. It was another notch, he thought, that she let him rouse her out of bed into half-wakefulness and then attempted to watch with him the coming light that slowly filled the sky with gold and amber and liquid copper.

He counted his notches.

Under the tight wrapping on the handle of his favorite katana, the old, battle-worn one, there were miniscule slits from the advent of its matching wakizashi, slits he could no longer see with his human eyes. He knew they were there though. When the nights turned to dying, he used come inside into his sanctuary, strip down and slide the wakizashi against his skin to coat it in his own blood. Then he would unwrap the katana and mark every defeated enemy upon its hilt.

Every notch brought him closer to freedom, he hoped. He didn't pray. The closest he came to praying was rubbing his thumbs against the bare hilt as he studied the already memorized picture of Buffy that stood on his desk through every change in his undead life. Every new home. Every new desk. Every day.

Every morning he now unwrapped the katana, leaving the wakizashi in its spot on the wall, and rubbed his fingertips along the naked hilt. He watched Buffy as he did it and thought maybe every morning it would have been fitting to add another notch. But the katana no longer seemed like the proper receptacle for it.

He re-wrapped the weapon and set it back in its place. Walking softly on the plush carpeting, he approached the bed and leaned over Buffy. He pressed a kiss to her temple and gathered her into his arms.

As the tentative tendrils of light began to invade the velveteen black sheen of the sky, he settled the sleepy Buffy onto the porch swing and sat next to her, one arm slung around her shoulders in casual comfort.

Dawn broke and he thought this is what all those notches were worth. Quiet time, Buffy's head on his shoulder and the sun.

He kissed the top of her head and thought he loved her.

He thought he earned her. Earned this.

He hid another smile in her hair and was content.


End file.
